1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed generally to an aircraft maintenance/diagnostic data transmission system and, more particularly, to on-board cellular data transmission/reception system in conjunction with maintenance/diagnostics data transmission over public telephone networks and the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is common for aircraft avionics and electronic engine control systems to require download of maintenance/diagnostic data for maintenance purposes. Presently, most aircraft utilized in passenger, freighter and business categories require some degree of diagnostic data download from one or more avionics and engine control equipment, such as an Electronic Engine Computer (EEC), Data Encryption Unit (DEU), Flight Management Computer (FMC), etc. These downloads are currently accomplished manually by connecting a download device to the aircraft, or using permanently installed maintenance/diagnostics terminals. The diagnostic information is transferred from the avionics equipment to storage media, such as floppy disks or CD-ROMs. Upon completion of the transfer from the avionics unit to the storage media, the maintenance/diagnostic information is transferred to the maintenance center of the airline for processing.
The current manual download includes the human as an active component of this activity. The steps include the downloading to a media, delivery of the media to the maintenance facilities and transfer of the data from the media to a maintenance computer for analysis.
Computer systems are typically used to analyze and manage the aircraft maintenance/diagnostics for the aircraft. Such systems require manual transportation of the down load media from each aircraft to the maintenance center.
Often times, radio frequency (RF) transmissions are used to transmit maintenance/diagnostic data relating to an aircraft. This technique, however, requires substantial investments to construct the RF transmission systems required for such a system to work. Furthermore, it is very expensive to create redundancy in such a system.
Maintenance/diagnostic data can also be transmitted to an aircraft via a telephone system located in a terminal. Such a system, however, requires that the aircraft be docked at the gate before transmission begins, thereby resulting in not being able to transfer uploads to aircraft that are routinely parked on the tarmac, away from the gates when loading and unloading passengers and cargo. Furthermore, such a system requires an added step of transmitting the download maintenance/diagnostic data from the telephone system to the maintenance center, increasing the cost of installing, operating, and maintaining such a system.
Thus, there is a need for an aircraft maintenance/diagnostics download system that automatically transfers aircraft/engine and maintenance/diagnostic data to the airline's or operator's maintenance and engineering center with little or no human involvement, and which relies on a widely available and reliable public wireless, public switch telephone network (PSTN), integrated services digital network (ISDN), and/or Internet delivery systems.